14 DAY TRIAL // MSI has just announced the launch of the Z68A-GD80 (G3) motherboard for LGA 1155 Sandy Bridge processors, which is one of the first such solutions to include support for the third generation of the PCI Express standard.
Even though users won't find a use for this technology yet, the MSI Z68A-GD80 was designed as a future proof motherboard, as Intel's upcoming Ivy Bridge CPUs, which also use the LGA 1155 socket, will include an on-die PCIe Gen 3 controller.
Going from PCIe Gen 2 to Gen 3 doubles the bandwidth available to the add-on cards installed, from 500MB/s per lane to 1GB/s per lane.
As a result, a PCI Express x16 slot is capable of offering 16GB/s (or 128Gbit/s) of bandwidth in each direction, which should prove more than enough for even the fastest graphics cards and SSDs.
Speaking of PCI Express x16, MSI's creation is equipped with three such slots, which are accompanied by two PCIe x1 as well as by two 32-bit legacy PCI slots.
The PCI Express x16 slots are compatible with both AMD CrossFireX and Nvidia SLI setups and users can also install up to eight SATA storage devices, thanks to the four SATA 6.0Gbps and four 3.0Gbps ports present.
The rest of the feature list includes support for the Virtu switchable graphics technology, dual Gigabit Ethernet, 7.1-channel audio, DVI and HDMI outputs, four USB 3.0 ports, and also FireWire and eSATA connectivity.
As almost all the other high-end MSI motherboards, the Z68A-GD80 (G3) is using Military Class II components (Hi-c CAP, Super Ferrite Choke and Solid caps), and sports a series of advanced overclocking features such as the OC Genie II engine and hardware voltage read points.
Even though MSI's press release announced the launch of the Z68A-GD80 (G3), the motherboard won't reach store shelves until later this month. No information regarding pricing is available at this time.